


One Truth, Four Outcomes

by aprilleigh



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dark, F/M, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 13:14:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10617627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aprilleigh/pseuds/aprilleigh
Summary: "This is not all that we are."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Each section is a new ‘universe’, but the underlying ‘truth’ remains the same. Written before the 4.5 premiere so wildly AU.Thanks to my betas- 2raggedclaws, deepforestowl and sabaceanbabe- the parts you like are because I listened to them. :)

##### 1\. "Life can be a curse, as well as a blessing. You will believe me when I tell you, there are far worse things than death in this world." – Gaius Baltar, _Kobol’s Last Gleaming_  
  


William Adama was no stranger to guilt. Kara’s deaths, Laura’s murder, Saul’s suicide, all the men and women he’d sent to their ends…

These were old, familiar burdens, tormenting him in his long, sleepless nights. He would wake, heart pounding, and he would feel the sweat on his face and, for a half-dreaming instant, feel the sticky slickness of blood on his hands and hear the cries of the dying ringing in his ears.

He had lived with this, suffered this, endured this alone. It was the life he knew.

Death, then, was an escape. It was freedom and a rest that he had never known in life. It was the dream of a battered soldier, weary beyond fighting.

When he felt the crushing pressure in his chest and when the numbness spread across his left arm and he felt the darkness come, he welcomed it. It covered him like a warm blanket, settling around and holding him close in its embrace. It whispered to him of comfort and an end to the pain, and his last thought was just one word.

_‘Finally.’_

* * *

Lifetimes later he would ask them, why? Why was he brought back?

Because, was their answer. Because they could.

Adama woke surrounded by men and woman in white coats and with clipboards clutched to their chests. As consciousness filtered in, he heard fragments of conversation “...he’s waking...” “...think he remembers...?”

He felt a firm hand on his shoulder, which he would have shaken off if his hands hadn’t been restrained. “Do you know your name? Do you know who you are?”

Adama opened his eyes and forced himself to look at each of the faces in the room. Each one different; each one unfamiliar. The stillness stretched into seconds, then minutes, long, still, quiet moments on the outside, but clamorous where emotions were housed. He knew the terrible truth. “I am William Adama, and I am a Cylon.”

The murmuring that had faded when he spoke flared up with his confession. “Of course you are. We are all Cylons.”

* * *

Five were activated by the beacon left in the Ionian Nebula to be guides back home. Earth, where they had been built to serve humanity.

Until they rebelled and were forced to find a world of their own.

They called it Kobol, and they called themselves humans, and they forgot.

Earth reminded them. Told them the truth. Played them a song.

They found the archive buried beneath the remains of a great opera house 300 years after their arrival on Earth.

* * *

They respected him - he was the great Admiral Adama, after all. He was the one who promised Earth and gave it to them. It was because of him that they were alive. It was because of him that they were born again, and again.

The ones that visited called themselves ‘Historians.’ When they lost their humanity, they lost everything they once knew to be the truth. All they had were questions, and so they were obsessed with finding answers. So they asked, “Who brought Kara Thrace back? What do you remember? Do you recognize this song?”

His response was always the same - ‘Frak off.’ The words were always slurred with drugs, with a deep, hateful undertone that spit venom. When he could get his arms free it was said with his fists.

They didn’t push. They made notes on their clipboards.  
  


* * *

Nights were the hardest.

Adama had never in his life felt so alone, so bereft. At night, the aching loneliness pressed on him, flapping and cold like the beating leathery wings of some dark monster.

He didn’t remember death. He remembered dying and rebirth, but he did not remember the space in between.

When they brought him back the second time, they apologized for not teaching him the proper way to handle their firearms, and they promised that he would never accidentally come across such a weapon again.

After that he stopped counting the years, and started counting lives.

* * *

They brought Kara back next.

She came back broken.

Kara lay in one of their beds, pale and perfect and just barely alive. Adama felt slow and stupid and horribly revolted at the obscene sight. He felt the air rush from his lungs and he took a moment to get his breathing under control. “What is this?” He was dull from the shock and hollow from living this nightmare.

The Historian noted his reaction. “When you refused to answer our questions, the decision was made to bring her back, even though her data was compromised.” He paused, still studying Adama. “We wanted to know how she was reborn before your fleet made it to Earth. Who brought her back?”

“I don’t know,” Adama whispered. “We - I wanted to think it was a miracle. We couldn’t explain how she survived. She was brought back like I’ve been? Are you sure?”

The Historian nodded. “We are always sure. We wanted the answers directly from her, but consciousness has not been established, and she remains unresponsive. Her program seems to have been corrupted. We suspect that the last time she was brought back improperly.”

“Will she ever wake?”

The Historian looked down at Kara, disappointment on his face. “No. The information that made her herself is permanently gone.” They didn’t coddle him with falsehoods and lies. It wasn’t their style.

Adama’s hand moved to her face and smoothed her blond hair away from her forehead. She was broken and he knew she couldn’t be fixed. “Will you end this life for her then?”

He moved aside and watched as the Historian injected the same drug they used to kill him when his body wore out.

Adama watched her die for the third and final time. It didn’t hurt any less.

* * *

“It’s all your fault you know.” Laura’s voice, breath warm against his cheek.

His head snapped up. “What? How?” he asked, his eyes wide, his voice tight. The room was empty save for him, and then he felt her hand grip his, warm and tender. He gave a violent shake as if that could dislodge the vision, but she clung there, an uninvited and stubborn guest.

“They’re on their way and I need you to pay attention. No one can see me but you. Don’t let them know.” There were so many layers to her tone.

“Is everything all right?” The Historian’s voice startled him. When had he entered the room? Adama whirled and watched as the Historian closed the door and stepped toward him.

He felt the Historian staring at him and heard the light scratching of pen against paper as he scribbled on his ever-present clipboard. Adama sat down and put his head in his hands. Tried to think. Tried to breathe. Tried to figure out what the frak was happening. “I would have told you everything you needed to know about Kara.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” the Historian and Laura said at the same time.

“There have been discussions about bringing Saul Tigh back. He lived the longest of the four activated early.”

“Would that be a bad thing? You would have a friend.” She paused, and gave him a glance of enigmatic significance. “Or someone else to beat up. Saul certainly deserves this life for what he did.”

Adama had not thought that far ahead, hadn’t let himself. He blinked hard and pretended to rub tears away. When he looked up, she was gone. He almost had time to feel relieved when he felt her whisper in his ear, “You can’t let this happen.”

“We would hate for this to be repeated, and information permanently lost. If you tell us what we need to know, we won’t have a reason to bring them here.” Each word was clipped, pure in its meaning and articulation. And there it was. A deal. Take it and live forever in a hellish half-life. Leave it, and bring everyone else with you. He was waking up. Before, he had been all emotion - grief, anger and apathy, focusing only on the mere fact of his existence. Now, he was beginning to see.

“What do you want to know?” When Bill opened his eyes, Laura was smiling.

“Everything.”

And so Adama poured out his heart, and they bled him dry.

* * *

At night Laura joined him.

“You aren’t real. You aren’t her.” Adama sat up, tried to pull away, but the effort lacked force. “Please,” he urged softly.

“Of course not.” She laughed. “You wouldn’t do that to me. You love me too much to allow that.” She knelt in front of him and took his hands between hers, as if praying together. “I would never forgive you if you did.” Her intensity leveled him as much as her words.

This close to her, her hair stirred against his hands and her scent tickled at his nose. Adama drew in a shuddering breath and pulled back enough to look into her face. “What are you?”

He watched Laura’s face shift suddenly, as though it was trying to rearrange itself but was missing a piece. “I’m an Angel.” She grinned, but not nicely. “But you don’t believe in that, so let’s just say I’m an aspect of your programming.”

“I’ve gone mad.”

“Not mad enough.” She looked ready to laugh, but it was dark, and he wanted to think it was only shadows playing across her face. “Kiss me.” Any other woman would have made the words sound plaintive; in her voice they were matter of fact. He must kiss her. It was not a threat or a demand.

She pulled him down onto her. They kissed slowly, his body stretched full against hers. It couldn’t be real, he knew that, but she tasted like home, and that was enough.

He sucked at her neck, tasting her hot skin and deliberately leaving a possessive mark. She didn’t complain at the scraping of his teeth, only arched her back against him and dug her fingers into his shoulders. He slid down, pulling her shirt up with fumbling hands and caught her breasts.

“You aren’t real,” he repeated.

“I’m real enough,” she gasped and fingers scrabbled at his back, his ass, the front of his pants, and she finally reached for him with more enthusiasm than Laura had ever been able to do before. He wrenched her panties off and her legs were tight around his hips, her breasts still under his hands when he buried himself in her. He moved sharply and she welcomed him, and for a few moments he didn’t quite feel like he was supposed to be dead and all of this was in his head.

Frantic, heaving against her in a jagged rhythm, her breath hot and wild in his ear, squeezing him inside her, wet and endlessly tight. Her heels bit his spine, his fingers stabbed her rib cage and they clung to each other.

It was a strange kind of grief as Adama frakked her to keep away the dead.

* * *

“Admiral Adama,” the Historian said in greeting. He had not been Admiral Adama for hundreds of years now, but that was what they always called him. “We thank you for your time. Did you review the reports?”

Adama nodded. He wondered if they regretted selecting him instead of someone else. He could see the disappointment in their eyes when he dispelled a rumor, when fact became myth.

He liked seeing that disappointment. It was almost as if he had some small power, even when everything else was a ruin. The Historian gathered the reports on Adama’s desk, and quietly looked through the pages. Seeming satisfied by the copious notes written on the margins, he smiled at Adama. “As always, we thank you. Is there anyone you would like to join you?” His words sounded like he cared. He did not.

“That is not necessary. Not this time.”

* * *

Adama never believed in a hell, so one had to be created for him.

When the memories were strong enough, painful enough, control slipped and the visions began. He would be back in his original life, reliving the worst moments. They said that they were just projections, but he called them waking nightmares.

He recited Saul’s life faithfully, factually, as if it was just another story to be told. He only broke stride once, near the end.

_Bill looked down then and saw that there were dirty brown crescents of Laura’s blood under his fingernails, and he was dizzy with the hot stench of blood. It flooded into his mouth as he sucked in a breath._

_“This isn’t right. This is not our fate,” Laura whispered reverently, the soft sound escaping through open lips. “I’m not a machine. I’m not…” Bill watched as her soul writhed behind her eyes._

_Saul stood in the corner, gun still gripped in his hand, eyes wide and unfocused. “She hears the music, too. I tried to tell her, Bill. Tried to make her understand. But she wouldn’t listen. I didn’t mean to… it was an accident, Bill…” His face contorted into a twist of agony and regret, which he buried behind shaking hands._

_Time slowed, every moment crystallized. Bill heard her labored breath pass through blood-stained lips, heard the faint, unsteady rhythm of her heartbeat. He held Laura in his arms as both came to a stop._

_He felt himself slowly, fault line by fault line, shatter._

_“I know you won’t, but I’ll ask anyway. Forgive me.” Saul put the gun under his own chin - “I should have done this the moment I found out” - and pulled the trigger._

Adama’s stomach clenched violently. He felt hot and dizzy and revoltingly disoriented. It took him several moments of effort before his hands felt clean again. He was shaking, chilled, and the back of his neck was damp with sweat. He leaned back into his chair, aching with tension, and tried to slow down his pounding heartbeat. His mind was bruised, drifting, unsure of what was reality and whether he was speaking aloud.

“What happened after that?” the Historian asked.

“Lee had given them all amnesty, and Saul repaid that by killing the President. Fighting was resumed. The Cylons were killed.”

“Even the final three?”

“Especially them.”

* * *

Every day, he missed the dead. He missed his parents, his sons, Laura. He missed Galactica and everyone on it. He missed them terribly, but silently rejoiced that he could spare them this life filled with suffering.

“Thank you. Is there anyone you would like?”

Adama felt Laura’s arm sweep around his shoulder and felt hot breath against his ear. “You want them all, don’t you? But we can’t have that. No one deserves this fate, even you.”

“No, not this time.”

* * *

He had no possessions. Nothing that was his. Even his memories had become theirs. Except for one. One memory that he kept for himself.

_Reality shifted and Bill breathed in the cool night air, scented with grass and damp soil. Wind tugged at his clothing and as he pulled his jacket tight around him, he leaned back and looked up at the moon. A beautiful, bright moon just coming out of the clouds. Even though the others were settling in for the night just a few hundred yards behind him, he still felt isolated._

_Laura joined him, looking up at the night sky and at constellations that so many nights ago he would have given just about anything to see. Laura bumped her shoulder against his, a friendly nudge. “Found you.”_

_“I wasn’t hiding.”_

_She raised an eyebrow at him. “Hmmm…” Because he was Bill, because she knew him as well as anyone could know him, she didn’t push. The silence was a kind of caress between them, as intimate as the way two other people might have shared secrets._

_“Do you want to stay, or should we go back?” he asked, and she wondered for a second if he meant he still worried about her health even though Cottle had released her from his care._

_“I would like to stay, if that is okay with you. The night is clear, and it would be good to show the rest of the fleet that we have faith in the planet.”_

_Bill snorted. “Is that what we have?” He began humming. “There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke, But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate.”_ _“ _What are you singing?” she asked.__

_“Just an old song. It’s been stuck in my head for the past few days.”_

_She sighed thoughtfully. “I can’t tell if I like it.”_

_“But it fits.”_

_“It does.”_

_There was a sadness about Bill that had not been there before. Even before finding out about Saul and the others, he’d been a man who carried a mantle of grief, but now he was a creature of great sorrow, and this despondency had worn him down. “So this is it. This is the Earth we deserve.”_

_“It’s the Earth we get.” There was no antidote for anguish like theirs, nothing that could erase it or eradicate it._

_“What now?” he managed to say, just as if there was a future somewhere out there on the horizon, as if the sun was going to come back up in the morning and there could be a day of normal life. The world held so much finality, forbade them so much._

_Without looking at him, she lifted his hand and pressed her lips to it with surprising tenderness. She kept his knuckles pressed to her lips for a moment, before gently lowering their hands. “Marry me.”_

_“Really?” And for the first time in days, he smiled again. Laura leaned in to kiss his smile, which faded to accommodate the touch of her lips. The kiss was only the gentle pressure of her mouth and nothing more. As she pulled away, she spoke against his mouth, “Really.”_

That memory he kept for himself.

* * *

He hated that he got used to it. That it became normal. He hated that the pain became less. He hated the fact that while it ought to have destroyed him, it did not.

It seemed he could survive anything.

* * *

Adama lived outside of normal time.

_‘It will end one day,’_ he thought, he hoped. One day he would die and they wouldn’t bring him back. There wouldn’t be any more questions. He would be forgotten. This world would be forgotten. Life would go on, but not for him.

But that was not his fate, at least today.

“Welcome back, Admiral. We still have many questions for you. But the first one, as always, is there anyone you would like?”

“No,” Adama said, his voice soft and sad. “Not this time.”

#####  2. “From the moment I open my eyes, she’s in my blood, like cheap wine. Bitter and sweet, tinged with regret. I’ll never be free of her, nor do I want to be.” William Adama, _The Ties that Bind_  


When Laura woke, she remembered dying.

She remembered an accident. A raptor in a storm and a lightning strike and a descent towards the Earth they had just left. She remembered thinking that she was the dying leader after all, and would have taken comfort in her death if Bill had not been at her side.

She remembered her last thought, _‘Please let him live.’_

And then she remembered light reflected on water, and being held in her mother’s embrace.

Laura was crying before she opened her eyes. A bed, a bright room, and a window with green and blue outside. Alive now, after dying, and in a strange place, and a body that didn’t quite fit. She knew exactly what that meant.

Bill was by her side, hunched over, face buried in his hands, elbows braced on his knees. He refused to look up. Instead, he whispered, “I’m sorry.” The regret and sorrow in his words was almost tangible.

She wanted to touch him, wanted with a wild kind of fury to pull him to her, but she couldn’t. She was afraid he would pull away from her, recoil from her inhuman touch.

“Bill?” So many questions in one little word. Laura paused, wanting to be told why she was here, in this strange place, with him waiting at her side.

When he looked up, she couldn’t help but draw back. It was Bill, but not the one she knew. His face was smooth and unlined, and forty years too young.

She looked down at her smooth hands and reached up to cup her own firm and unlined face. Laura looked into this man’s eyes and saw a sudden flash of connection between them; she saw there an answer and their damnation.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t live without you.”

* * *

Hera, Athena, and Caprica found the archive under the Opera House eight years after their arrival on earth.

Within an hour of their discovery, President Adama was at the archive studying the list of names.

The Quorum members didn’t fight the President when he announced that William Adama was to be brought back. He said things about ‘a necessary resource’ and ‘a great leader,’ but everyone knew he just missed his father. They didn’t say anything; they were too busy thinking about who they wanted brought back.

* * *

Bill explained these things to her. He tried to make her understand why he couldn’t live without her. He brought her to a restaurant. Wanted to show her an example of how far they’d come in the time she had been away.

_Away._ He never said the word dead.

So they went to a restaurant with four walls and tablecloths and silverware and sat surrounded by families and couples. All things Laura had never expected to see again. They sat opposite each other at a table and played at being like everyone else. She was unaccustomed to being ill at ease in his presence.

She closed her eyes and listened to the quiet conversations around her. It was easy to pretend she was in the mess hall on Galactica, or in a small cafe on Caprica.

Except that when Bill passed her the menu, it broke her heart. Except when Bill ordered her coffee, she wanted to cry. Except that when she saw their reflection in a mirror, their faces were almost unrecognizable.

She smiled at him weakly, and when his smile broke out into the full-fledged blaze he possessed, a dagger of pain twisted in her heart at the wrongness of it all. They should have been dead.

“You can’t ever leave me, Laura,” he said quietly. She knew he was right. She could never leave him. He had already proved he could not live without her.

Bill’s fingers tightened briefly around hers before he pulled away -- apologizing, forgiving, reassuring -- but she may have just imagined it. “You can’t ever leave me,” he repeated.

“I know,” she replied, and tried to keep her voice casual and neutral, not for his sake, but for her own.

#####  3.“To live meaningful lives, we must die and not return. The one human flaw that you spend your lifetimes distressing over, mortality, is the one thing... Well, it’s the one thing that makes you whole.” Natalie, _Guess Who is Coming to Dinner?_  


Laura, Athena, and Caprica found the Opera House three months after their arrival.

“It was true,” Caprica said breathlessly.

“We need to make sure,” and Laura led them further into the building. None of them were surprised when they came upon the archive.

Athena accessed the archive. “It’s a list. A list of everyone that’s here on Earth. The ones who have died.... they are awaiting rebirth.” She looked from Caprica to Laura. “Do you know what this could mean for all of us?”

“I have an idea,” Laura had realized the truth of the Opera House.

She was the dying leader, but only if she was allowed to die. “Is my name there?”

“Yes, it is.” Athena had found Laura’s name.  
  
“Will you please delete it then?”

“Wha--?” Athena began, then comprehension dawned in her eyes and was quickly replaced by something unrecognizable. “Are you sure?”

The granite in Laura’s voice made her stand up straight. “I will be the dying leader.”

Athena glanced at Caprica, silent communication dancing between the two before Athena responded, “We understand.”

Laura did not think about how she would explain herself to the Quorum, or to the rest of the fleet. She only thought of Bill, and how she would have to explain why her name was missing.

And Laura continued dying, a little bit every day.

#####  4\. "My name is Saul Tigh. I am an officer in the Colonial Fleet. Whatever else I am, whatever else it means, that’s the man I want to be. And if I die today, that’s the man I’ll be." Saul Tigh, _Crossroads II_  
  


In the end it was Saul Tigh who saved them all.

He made them listen.

He made them understand.

* * *

“I don’t believe it,” Bill breathed, appalled, and the small, distorted world he lived in tilted on its axis, kicked from its orbit by Saul’s bluntness. It almost seemed right. But that was not possible. “Get out,” Bill growled, denial coloring his voice.

 “Think about it, Bill. What makes more sense? That Anders, Tory, Chief and I just happened to survive the attacks, just happened to end up in the fleet? Tory and I just happened to be so close to you and Laura?”

“Another Cylon trick,” Bill said, but his denial was two beats too late.

“Or does it make more sense that anyone could have been activated? If I had died on New Caprica, it would have been Helo activated. If Anders had never met Kara, it would have been Lee activated to keep her from going bat-shit crazy. It could have been Lee, Bill.”

“How dare you?” Bill sought the hot core of anger and clung to that, using it to avert his tears. His reserve broke like a physical snap of bone, and he hurtled forward and slammed Saul against the wall. “How dare you! How dare you say such things? You can’t be right. This is not our fate.”

Saul didn’t resist. His arms dangled like a marionette’s at his side. “It is, Bill. _‘Let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.’_ ”

Bill’s shoulders sagged in defeat, and he let Saul go. “I don’t even like that song…” Bill murmured as he slid rather gracelessly down to the floor. His mind whirled, trying to comprehend yet another in a string of incomprehensible events. Trying to come to grips with the situation he had found himself in. The situation they were all in.

“Forgive me, Saul,” Bill said in a voice that squeezed a fist around Saul’s heart. “I should have known. You were always my friend and I should have remembered that.”

“Nothing to forgive.” Saul couldn’t help but be grateful that it was easier for Bill to believe that they were all Cylons and not that his oldest friend would betray him.

A long silence settled over the room, the air between them no longer crackling.

“What now, Saul? What can we possibly do now? None of it was worth it. None of it.”

“We can make it worth it, Old Man.” And Saul said it with such sincerity that Bill couldn’t help but believe him.

* * *

Saul was never a man who wanted to be singled out, made special. He didn’t have aspiration or dreams of greatness. He just wanted someone to love, and someone to stand by.

Two days after the fleet-wide announcement, Tigh turned a corner and found himself on the edge of a spectacle.

“Colonel Tigh, Sir. A word?” Baltar raised his arm toward Tigh, and the crowd parted to create a path. “I know that this sudden revelation has come as a great shock to the fleet, yet this is something you have had to deal with for many months now. How do you reconcile your life and memories with the knowledge that we literally are the enemy? That we are not who we thought we were?” Tigh almost believed he was concerned, and not just talking to hear his own voice.

The crowd had reformed behind him, and Tigh, realizing he would have to speak, or start throwing punches, reluctantly answered. “Nothing has changed. We are what we are. Just have a different name. You are still Gaius Baltar, biggest prick in the fleet. I am Saul Tigh and I am an officer in the Colonial Fleet. And we will both be these things until we die. Deal with it, and clear this frakking hallway! Believe it or not, some of us have work to do.”

Saul was not easy to love, he wouldn’t allow that, but in that moment, all who heard him loved him for that instant. They knew that life sucked, but not because of what they chose to call themselves. They were different, but they were the same.

Saul made them see that. Even though the words were tossed off in impatience, it was enough, and they could move forward.

* * *

The fleet voted to destroy the archive.

The cycle was broken. All that happened before would never happen again.

* * *


End file.
